does the president have total authority?

i know that cuomo wants to cite the constitution. the judiciary might not think this is necessary.

it sort of depends on what kind of law that trump is actually citing. the division of powers (to use a canadian term to refer to the concept of states rights, which i've learned that you need to articulate carefully) is really about the legislature, not the executive; it's about deciding which laws passed in which house take precedent when they contradict each other, as they some times do.

the reality is that presidential executive orders are largely going to legally trounce all of that, especially when it has anything to do with security. the president is not a king, but he is a kind of napoleonic military dictatorship. the primary role is commander in chief. domestic priorities are kind of a secondary end-around, and not really how the system was designed. so, a lot of what the president actually does day-to-day should really be being done by congress, it is true, but the question of security is really distinctly presidential, and these executive orders are really not that different than proclamations, when you examine their legal weight.

yes, there are all kinds of arguments to use against an executive order. it has to be rational. it has to be proportional. etc. but, all the president really has to do to wield essentially unchecked authoritarian power is tie the order to security, and make a halfways coherent argument about thinking the policy is going to work.

so, can the president open new york city by executive order?

he can if he can convince a judge that the issue is in the domain of security, and that he really, honestly thinks that the action is safe, or perhaps that keeping the city shut is contributing to security issues in some other way, which may be less absurd in a few weeks, once it really warms up, and the number of homeless people starts to increase due to illegal evictions and as a consequence of mass joblessness.

can he do that? it's a harder argument than the one he made with the travel ban, granted. but, in a real sense, all he has to do is actually make it, because the court is unlikely to second guess him, once it gets appealed.

i guess it's an open question as to whether any of this is desirable or not.

but, i'd expect trump to prevail in court, if it comes down to it.